Document 2020489

BOOKS New Titles From Leading Researchers
Message
from the Vice President
(Research)
Welcome to the inaugural issue of
ResearchLIFE, the University of Manitoba’s
research magazine!
The first major research university in Western
Canada, the University of Manitoba has been
bringing research to life for more than a century.
From the development of canola and advances
in wireless communication, to the elimination of
Rh disease of the newborn and new strategies for
fighting HIV/AIDS, our researchers have made
contributions that have had a global impact.
Today, our artists, engineers, scholars and scientists continue this quest for knowledge and its
application – by finding new ways to improve our
health and protect our environment, developing
new technologies that better our lives and the
world in which we live, and building civil societies and stronger communities here and around
the world.
I invite you to turn the page and step into the
exciting world of research at the University of
Manitoba. You will be inspired by what you find.
This magazine conveys the amazing passion
for discovery of our faculty and students, a
passion that I am privileged to share in each
and every day.
—Joanne C. Keselman, Ph.D.
ResearchLIFE | winter 2009
winter 2009 VOLUME 1
Return of the sun
Inside
11
For thousands of years the sun has dipped behind the
horizon and then returned to bring hope of warmth
and spring to the Inuit people of the high Arctic.
The roles played by the return of the sun and the
importance of light and darkness in everyday life in
the Arctic have been incorporated into a teaching
resource developed by researchers at the University
of Manitoba – with the goal being the improvement
of science and math education.
By Janine Harasymchuk
18
18
25
29
biopsies beware
They made the world take note when they began biopsying every
patient despite what blood tests said, and now they are on their way
to making biopsies a thing of the past. By Sean Moore
25
the story
A Jewish saying asks what is truer than truth? And it answers:
The story. By Sean Moore
29
keyhole
Guy Maddin, UofM’s distinguished film maker in residence and
George Toles, chair of the film studies program, collaborate on a
new film. By Guy Maddin
Happenings..................... 3
Spotlight on Students.... 23
One MIND....................... 5
Viewpoint...................... 28
Kudos............................. 7
Creative Works............. 29
Centres & Institutes....... 10
On the Horizon.............. 33
Hot of the Presses......... 15
Just the Facts............... 34
Ideas to Innovation......... 17
ResearchLIFE
RETURN UNDELIVERABLE
CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO:
UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA
540 Machray Hall
Winnipeg, MB Canada R3T 2N2
Tel 204-474-7300 • Fax 204-261-0325
[email protected]
Vice-President (Research)
Joanne C. Keselman
Editor and Manager of
Research Communications
& Marketing
Janine Harasymchuk
Design
Relish Design Studio Ltd.
Contributors
Sean Moore
Lindsay Fagundes
Tamara Ansons
Gary Brownstone
Lancelot Coar
Guy Maddin
J. Elliot Scott
Ilana Simon
Mickey Wener
Photography
Cover: Doug Barber
Tamara Nathaniel
Member of the University Research
Magazine Association: www.urma.org
umanitoba.ca/research
ISSN# 1918-1442
Happenings
Speaker series kicks off the year
The Bringing Research to Life Speaker Series features outstanding
researchers from the University of Manitoba. Over 200 people came out to hear
food scientist Rick Holley and clinical health psychologist John Walker give their
perspectives and answer questions. Here’s a synopsis of their presentations.
Tough choices made easier
Why, clinical health psychologist John Walker asks, can we
learn about televisions from an unbiased and accurate source
before buying one, but when we need medical treatment we have
no comparable source to first turn to?
“When it comes to getting help for anxiety there are several
different treatments,” Walker said. “They look different and have
very different characteristics. But often, people wind up at a
treatment not having made a thoughtful decision about what they
want to do, and often they don’t realize what sort of commitment
a treatment comes with.”
Medical treatments – be it for anxiety or for problems
pertaining to the prostate or high cholesterol – should not be
decided upon in a cavalier fashion.
Walker has conducted surveys with adults and parents
asking them what information they would want to know if they,
or someone they knew, experienced anxiety or depression.
“I think the public needs, in the long-run, something like
consumer reports. For 30 years I’ve known where to go when I
want to buy a car or TV. It’s not perfect, but it’s solid. We need a
consumer report for health care. A lot of the information we have
is sketchy, not consumer friendly, and produced by people selling
a product.”
On the anxiety treatment front, Walker notes that things have
improved significantly in recent years. For instance, 20 years ago,
it may have taken dozens of therapy sessions to resolve a problem. Today, six sessions can sometimes be all one needs.
“There are a lot of reasons to be positive,” Walker said. “We
know more and more about how to treat anxiety and depression.
The treatments are getting better and we’re getting better at
intervening earlier on.”
John Walker, clinical
health psychology
ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
Rick Holley,
food sciences
Is our food safe?
Food borne illness makes us and our economy sick, and unless major changes take place a healthy future remains precarious, according to food scientist Rick Holley. Holley has lost count
of the number of media interviews he has given on the subject in
the last several months. At last count it was well over 200.
“I want people to recognize that there are some significant
deficiencies in the food system in Canada and there is a need
for the government to take some very specific action to address
these issues,” Holley said. “I want to put this food borne illness
outbreak we recently saw into some perspective in terms of what
is down the road for us as a society.”
Holley said we’re too reliant on inspection of food and not
food systems (like ensuring pasteurization is properly performed).
We’re not gathering and sharing good data about food borne
illnesses so our surveillance programs are impotent, and our
legislation needs retooling.
Right now the Canadian government is reliant on inspecting
food for safety.
“But you can’t inspect safety into food. Anyone who thinks you
can is wrong. You have to build safety into food. American car
manufacturers learned long ago that you can’t inspect safety into
automobiles; you have to build it in. And it’s no different for food
manufacturing.”
Rick Holley will have the opportunity to bring his expertise
to use with having been recently named to a Canadian Food
Inspection Agency (CFIA) external advisory panel. Among the
panel’s first duties will be recommending improvements to CFIA’s
listeria prevention rules.
Preventing and Alleviating Violence
National Research Day of the tri-provincial research network
Research and Education for Solutions to Violence and Abuse
(RESOLVE) was hosted by the University of Manitoba in
early November.
The two-day conference provided a look at issues surrounding the causes of violence, and ways to prevent and alleviate
that violence. The day also provided an opportunity for researchers and community service providers to continue to work
together to make our world a less violent place for all.
“Everyone who works in this field envisions a world of
violence-free homes and strongly desires that outcome, but I
also think service providers and researchers are realistic,”
said Jane Ursel, RESOLVE’s director.
RESOLVE Manitoba partnered with the Canadian Alliance
of Research Centres on Violence, and the Canadian
Observatory on the Justice System Response to Intimate
Partner Violence – an international network of researchers,
practitioners and policy-makers from across many disciplines
– making the conference a truly international event.
Soup
Up Your Smile
For the 7th year in a row, the School of Dental Hygiene
continued to reach out to Winnipeg’s inner city residents at
Siloam Mission. On November 6, dental hygiene students were
making a difference by sharing practical information that can help
prevent oral pain and disease, and contribute to a healthier smile.
Interested individuals had an opportunity to have a dental hygiene
assessment and oral hygiene consultation on site in the newly
established Saul Sair Health Clinic’s dental facility.
All patrons received an oral hygiene product package and entered
draws for winter wear, toiletries and other useful items. To further support
the event, the students organized a drive at the Faculty of Dentistry
for clothing and non-perishable foods.
In 2005, The Canadian Dental Hygienists Association
recognized the School of Dental Hygiene’s Soup Up Your
Smile student outreach project with the Oral-B Health
Promotion Award “for creatively promoting
oral health to this underserved
population.”
Immunology
Research
Expanding
The immunology research facility
in the Faculty of Medicine recently
announced their expansion into new
space in the Apotex Centre on the
Bannatyne Campus. The expansion
comes as a result of an $1.6 million
contribution through the Winnipeg
Partnership Agreement.
The Department of Immunology has
outgrown its current facilities in the
Basic Medical Sciences Building. The
new facility will lead to the expansion
of existing and new research programs
and to increased commercialization
from these programs.
“This was an experience that touched my heart personally and hopefully
touched the minds of those that we had the privilege of engaging in
conversation with at Soup Up Your Smile 2008.” (student participant)
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE One
Mind
MANY insights
Dr. David T. Barnard began his term as the 11th President and Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Manitoba on July 1, 2008. He is a respected scholar, educator and administrator.
Dr. Barnard studied computer science at the University of Toronto (B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D.) before joining
the faculty of Queen’s University. He also studied theology at Regent College at the University of
British Columbia (Dip.C.S.). He then moved to the University of Regina, first as Vice-President (Administration) and then as President (1998-2005) during a period of significant change and growth.
ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
With a love for poetry, he likes quoting from one of his favourite poets, W. H. Auden, who wrote that “Those
who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.” Barnard says, “I like
that perspective on life. As a humane person, I believe it is important that we balance our thinking and
acting… That is what we are doing here at the University.”
What follows is an excerpt from
I think there are two aspects of research.
I think of the teaching mission as being
preserving and passing on what we know.
The research mission is expanding the
boundaries of what we know but also
looking inside what we think is the body
of knowledge and challenging it. Asking
questions like ‘that’s what the people
that came before us thought but is that
really true? Are we really sure about that?
Maybe we should go back and look at
that again?’
Insight is required to know what
questions are capable of either pushing
the boundary out to something new or
going back and reexamining the things
we think we know and seeing if there is a
different understanding of them. Finding
the inspiration to frame those questions
is one of the challenges of research and it
brings the excitement to research.
Knowledge is like a sphere growing in
space. The more we know the bigger the
surface is that impinges on what we don’t
know. There are lots of questions to ask.
I think that when we answer questions
that we think are pretty fundamental
questions, often we come up with models
that have a complexity that was greater
than what was anticipated – so you think
that here is question ‘x’ and I’m going to
answer that question and then I’m going
to know. But the answer to that question
a conversation with David Barnard:
raises a whole set of other questions. Then
we must figure out what the answers to
those are. So, it’s not a finite task; or, if it is
finite, we don’t see the end of it in sight.
To me, there is also real magic in one
of the other major components of
university activity – teaching.
Sometimes people will expect that
because I’m a computer scientist that I’m
going to be heavily biased in favour of
information technology based delivery
systems for teaching. I think there are
some wonderful tools out there. But I
often ask in groups “think of your two or
three most significant learning experiences in your education background.” How
many people are thinking about reading
a web page? Probably nobody. I’ve never
had anyone say that. Most of us don’t
even talk about reading a particular book.
Some people can, because sometimes
reading a book can be a life changing
experience. But for most of us it will be
telling a story about a teacher in university or secondary school, sometimes even
in grade school. Or it’ll be a story about a
team of students that you worked with on
a third year project for several weeks in a
row, staying up half the night working on
this massive thing and complaining about
it, but in the end learning a huge amount
and finding a tremendously meaningful
human experience.
For most of us our most significant
learning experiences are experiences
with other people – usually teachers,
sometimes fellow students, sometimes
our parents – that have shaped our lives.
I think what happens – that’s where the
magic happens in the classroom – is that
you encounter someone who really cares
about a discipline and they can communicate the excitement and the passion
about the intellectual content of the
discipline to students and say “look what’s
happening here and look how amazing
this is!” If the person finds it amazing and
can communicate his or her amazement
in it, that’s where the magic happens
in education.
Communicating all that magic is
our challenge.
It’s the challenge in our classroom and
the challenge of bridging the gap between
the very specialized focused research
questions that faculty and graduate
students and sometimes undergraduates
focus their attention on; bridging the
gap between that really detailed, specific
thing, to the big idea that matters and
makes sense to our friends in the community. And we will never run out of
work because it’s always going to be
a challenge. n
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE kudos
Rock star strikes gold
Geoscientist and Distinguished Professor Frank Hawthorne,
often described as a ‘rock star,’ struck gold
earlier this year when he was awarded the
Killam Prize for lifetime achievement in
teaching and scholarship in the natural sciences by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Hawthorne’s research combines
chemical theory and mathematics with
innovative ways of understanding
minerals, and has led to groundbreaking
research on crystal structures and crystal
chemistry of complex minerals, and to
advances in a number of topical areas,
including environmental mineralogy and
the disposal of high-level wastes.
Hawthorne is recognized as one of the
world’s leading mineralogists. In 2002,
he was listed by Sciencewatch as the most
highly-cited mineralogist/crystallographer
for the decade 1990 to 2000.
Hawthorne has the added distinction
of having had the mineral Hawthorneite
named after him by the International
Mineralogical Association. The mineral is
a green coloured crystal, found in Utah.
The Killam Prize is Canada’s most
distinguished annual award for outstanding career achievements. Hawthorne was
one of only five who received this honour
in 2008. The Prizes were inaugurated in
1981 and financed through funds donated
to the Canada Council by Mrs. Dorothy
J. Killam, in memory of her husband
Izaak Walton Killam. Created to honour
eminent Canadian scholars and scientists
who are actively engaged in research,
whether in industry, government agencies
or universities, the prize brings with it a
$100,000 award to further his research.
Frank Hawthorne, geological
sciences, Canada Research
Chair, Killam Prize Winner
The essence of dignity
Dying from cancer is not
pleasant. Doing so with dignity is
something that Harvey Chochinov’s
research has focused on for more than 20
years. This research has had an impact on
cancer control in Canada and has been
recognized by the National Cancer Institute of Canada and the Canadian Cancer
Society with the presentation of the
prestigious Dr. O. Harold Warwick Prize.
It is given to a scientist whose research
has had a major impact on cancer control
or care in Canada.
Chochinov is not only credited with
making major contributions to psychooncology and palliative care, but he is
a recognized pioneer, whose work has
helped define the field. He has been
leading a national initiative – dubbed
the Canadian Virtual Hospice – aimed at
providing information and support for
dying Canadians, their families, healthcare providers and volunteers.
ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
Doug Barber
Schools on Board
participants
Roberta Koscielny
l-r: Jimm Simon, National President,Canadian
Cancer Society; Harvey Chochinov
Schools on Board gets an A+
The University of Manitobabased Schools on Board program, an
outreach initiative of ArcticNet, won the
2008 Canadian Excellence in Environmental Education Award. The award
is given by the not-for-profit Canadian
Network for Environmental Education
and Communication (EECOM), Canada’s
only, national, bilingual, network for
environmental education and
communication.
Schools on Board takes high school
students and teachers from across the
country and places them on a ship in the
high Arctic with scientists conducting
research on board. The program began in
2003, under the direction of Lucette Barber in the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of
the Environment, Earth and Resources.
(Left) Inuit participant
students working in fish
dissection lab; (Right)
Student collecting samples
from box cores
Schools on Board
The Canadian Virtual Hospice website
(virtualhospice.ca) enables the exchange,
synthesis and ethically-sound application
of new knowledge in the area of palliative care. The result is the acceleration of
benefits of palliative care research for Canadians, by both improving services and
strengthening the palliative care system
nation wide.
Chochinov is a Distinguished Professor of psychiatry, community health sciences and family medicine and a Canada
Research Chair in Palliative Care at the
University of Manitoba. He directs the
Manitoba Palliative Care Research Unit at
CancerCare Manitoba.
The O. Harold Warwick Prize is named
after Dr. Warwick, a pioneering researcher in cancer control and treatment and
the first executive director of both the
National Cancer Institute of Canada and
the Canadian Cancer Society.
It was created to promote, in an exciting way, Arctic sciences to high schools
across Canada while demonstrating the
abundance of career options such a field
offers. The program is made possible
through the support of the University
of Manitoba and ArcticNet, a federal
collaboration of scientists, managers and
Northern residents collectively studying
Arctic systems.
Schools on Board operates on the
CCGS Amundsen, Canada’s premier
research icebreaker. During the latest
International Polar Year, schools from
11 countries (Canada, USA, UK, Spain,
China, Scotland, Sweden, Norway,
Germany, Greenland, and Russia) joined
Barber onboard the vessel for classes and
presentations – upwards of 80 of them
– on topics ranging from ocean structures and motions, ecological principles,
and Arctic circulation.
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE kudos
Every kernel counts
facility that will lead to profound new
insights in the area of stored grains.
Jayas’ research team were the first
group in the world to develop three-dimensional mathematical models of heat,
moisture and carbon dioxide transfer in
stored grain as well as the movement of
insects in grain. This provided the basis
for developing alternatives to pesticides
for the control of insects in grain to be
used ultimately for human and animal
consumption. In reducing spoilage of
For thousands of years, grains
have formed the basis of the human
diet throughout the world. Access to a
consistent supply of quality grains and
their products is literally the lifeblood
for developing and developed countries.
Any loss in quality or quantity can have
far-reaching effects, yet post-harvest
losses continue to range from nine per
cent in North America to fifty per cent in
developing countries. In the latter, high
losses can contribute to famine.
For the past 25 years, Digvir S. Jayas,
Distinguished Professor of biosystems
engineering, Faculty of Agricultural and
Food Sciences, has been working to improve storage of grain. Last year, that work
landed him the Dr. John M. Bowman Memorial Winnipeg Rh Institute Foundation
Award for outstanding research by senior
university faculty.
As Canada Research Chair in StoredGrain Ecosystems, Jayas attracted almost
$23 million in research grants and
contracts for his research that will
ultimately lead to improved grain quality
for consumers, increased cost efficiency
for farmers, and reduced waste product.
Indeed, he conceptualized and developed
the Canadian Wheat Board Centre for
Grain Storage Research, a leading-edge
Tamara Nathaniel
Canadian Wheat Board Centre
for Grain Storage Research
ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
stored grain, Jayas’ research has increased
remarkably the availability of high quality
grains to feed the growing population of
the world.
Jayas will be delivering a public lecture
titled “Making Every Kernel Count” on
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 at 8:00 p.m., 343
Drake Centre, University of Manitoba Fort
Garry Campus. n
Centres & institutes
25
Centre on Aging
Years Strong
The Centre on Aging celebrated its 25th
anniversary at the University of Manitoba over the past
year. Like all true celebrations, there was cake, but more
importantly, the anniversary afforded an excellent opportunity
to continue the centre’s mission of stimulating and promoting
research on aging and sharing what they’ve learned.
The centre hosted a very successful two-day conference, Looking Back to See the Future: What Have We Learned? Where Do
We Go From Here? The Centre on Aging was established in 1982
with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada (SSHRC). Dr. Chad Gaffield, President of
SSHRC welcomed conference participants on behalf of SSHRC.
The three directors of the centre over its history [Neena Chappell
(1982-1992), Laurel Strain (1993-2003), Verena Menec (2004present)] were on hand to provide a retrospective look at where
research on aging began and where it has moved to over time.
The Centre on Aging has a three-fold mandate: firstly, to
conduct, stimulate and promote research on aging; secondly, to
foster an interdisciplinary focus for these research activities at
the universities in Manitoba; and thirdly, to support the teaching of students in aging. The centre also serves as the hub for the
integration and dissemination of research on aging in Manitoba.
The centre’s research has had a long-lasting impact on how
programs are delivered in Manitoba and beyond. Some examples of how this research has been implemented include: a new
seniors strategy developed and implemented by the Manitoba
government (Advancing Age: Promoting Older Manitobans),
Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) educational
programs and workshops for hospital staff to create more elderfriendly hospitals, participation in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Age-Friendly Cities Project which resulted in
the development of a WHO guide for cities around the world to
become age-friendly.
Over the past 25 years, the Centre on Aging has earned an
international reputation for its rigorous standards of excellence
in research on aging. When the centre’s 50th anniversary roles
around, nearly one in five people in North America will be over
the age of 65. The body of research on aging already conducted
provides a head start to finding answers to the questions of how
to make our communities more age-friendly and what resources
need to be in place before that milestone occurs.
To learn more about the Centre on Aging, visit their website at
umanitoba.ca/centres/aging n
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 10
FEATURE
sun
By Janine Harasymchuk
RETURN OF THE
For thousands of years the sun has dipped behind the horizon and
then returned to bring hope of warmth and spring to the Inuit people
of the high Arctic. The roles played by the return of the sun and the
importance of light and darkness in everyday life in the Arctic have
been incorporated into a teaching resource developed by researchers
at the University of Manitoba – with the goal being the improvement
of science and math education.
11 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
n
Brian Lewthwaite, CRYSTAL co-director, and colleague Barbara McMillan are
working with Inuit and non-Inuit teachers
to develop specialized teaching resources
for use by elementary teachers in Nunavut
schools. Aptly named, Return of the Sun,
is a two-way science learning unit for
Qikiqtani Grade 2 students developed by
the Manitoba Centre for Research, Youth
Science Teaching and Learning (CRYSTAL) and an Inuit teacher, Louise Ugarak
of Igloolik. McMillan and Ugarak suggest:
“Light has always been a source of
wonder and a fascinating phenomenon
to explore whether the explorer’s age is
one or one hundred. We hope this sense
of wonder and curiosity is captured in the
science lessons you will be teaching and
in the first-hand investigations of light
that your students will be carrying out.
We suggest that you begin teaching this
unit two to three weeks before the dark
period begins when the decreasing period
of daylight is evident to young learners.
In this way children will become familiar
with our dependence on light and understand the joy expressed by their ancestors
when the Sun first appeared about the
horizon and indicated the end of the dark
months and the passing of the worst of
the winter season.”
Excerpt from Overview, Light, A
Two-Way Science Unit for Qikiqtani
Elementary Students
The teaching unit is a model for the use of
‘everyday’ parts of life that can add context
to the teaching of science and mathematics. It is a masterfully built tapestry of experiences that weave in the cultural stories
and traditions of the Inuit. It provides so
much more than practical contexts that
are needed for teaching, it also emphasizes
culture-based education identified by the
territorial government as one of the foundational principles for school development
in Nunavut.
The Return of the Sun teaching resource
is one amazing example of the resources
and tools that have come out of the larger
project – the CRYSTAL project.
Where did the CRYSTAL begin?
The University of Manitoba led Manitoba
CRYSTAL project was launched in 2005
by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), along
with four others at the Universities of
New Brunswick, Sherbrooke, Alberta
and Victoria. The Manitoba CRYSTAL is
directed by Gordon Robinson (Faculty of
Science) with the assistance of co-director
Brian Lewthwaite (Faculty of Education).
The Manitoba CRYSTAL includes some
twenty-four other co-applicants from the
three Manitoba universities (Brandon,
Winnipeg, Manitoba), the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface, the Universities
of Regina and Saskatchewan, and Lakehead University.
The acronym CRYSTAL (Centres of
Research in Youth, Science Teaching and
Learning) was not chosen by chance.
It grew out of William (Bill) Coderre’s
imagination. Coderre is NSERC’s Director
of Corporate and Regional Development
and has an academic background in solid
state physics.
“A large crystal can rapidly grow from
a small seed-crystal, if the environment it
is placed in is ready for that growth. The
NSERC CRYSTALs represent the seeding
of an idea. The idea being that research
can identify best practices in teaching science and math and why some work better
than others – from how students learn and
what are the most effective ways to teach
them; and with this knowledge we can
grow dramatic changes in the outcomes of
our school systems in effective science and
math learning,” said Coderre.
NSERC seeded five university-based
CRYSTALs across Canada to the tune of
$1 million per year for five years. Each
centre received $200,000 each year of the
five years funded. The project is currently
in year four of their five-year run.
Why science and math?
Our country’s economy depends on it.
Technologically developed countries
prosper in the current global economy. For
Canada to continue to grow and prosper
today’s children need to be tomorrow’s scientists and engineers. And, the more concrete concern, students are not entering
post-secondary education in the fields of
science and mathematics. Where will our
future scientists and engineers come from?
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 12
FEATURE
Tamara Nathaniel
(l-r) Gordon Robinson,
director, CRYSTAL and
Brian Lewthwaite, co-director
How can we change this? The answer is at
the fundamental level.
The Canadian Council on Learning released State of Learning in Canada: Toward
a Learning Future in July 2008. In this
report it states that “how young learners
(in the elementary and secondary school
years) perform in mathematics, problem
solving, reading comprehension and other
competencies is a strong predictor of later
performance. Students who perform well
in these areas are also more likely to participate in post-secondary education and
in the knowledge economy.”
“There is rarely attention given in
education to finding out what learners say
about what contributes to their learning.
Several of the projects are trying to find
out what is influencing their success,”
13 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
said Lewthwaite. “I ask myself, have we
really not taken the time to find out from
the learner? The learner can be an early,
middle or senior years’ student and in
many of the projects the learner is actually
the teacher. That is at the heart of it. Trying to find out what the learner is saying.”
What affects the learner?
The Manitoba CRYSTAL research has
focused on the central theme of success
in the teaching and learning of science
and math as an emergent property of a
number of interacting systems. Four of
these systems were selected for investigation: that of the individual learner, that
of the interaction between the learner
and his/her immediate environment (the
classroom), that of the interaction with the
community in which any school is situated, and that of the interaction with the
global environment.
Within each system reside factors
that have negative and positive impacts
on student success. These two factors
combined result in resiliency. The need is
to first identify these risk and protective
factors within each system, but then find
strategies to mitigate the former while optimizing the latter. Increased resiliency is
the ultimate goal, recognizing that the four
systems are interactive, with each affecting
the other and impacting on the success of
the student.
“In each [of the systems], we are dealing
with four systems that when we began,
became more than we first expected,” says
Gordon Robinson. “These aren’t separate
“The heart of the Manitoba
CRYSTAL is the learner and
their experiences.”
systems. They are interconnecting systems.
The lines between each began to blur. You
can start off doing research in System A,
maybe find you should be in System B. It
just speaks to the fact that everything has
an impact on student success and that it
isn’t a simple matter to pin down.”
In the Qikiqtani (Baffin Island) region
of Nunavut, a five-year school community science development project was
undertaken by CRYSTAL in three schools:
Pond Inlet, Clyde River and Igloolik. This
process applied the guiding principles of
Inuit Quajimajatuqangit (IQ) to the improvement of science curriculum delivery.
The approach honours the knowledge,
principles and values the communities see
as fundamental to defining who and what
they are.
As part of the development project,
extensive consultations were held with
teachers, principals, education authorities, parents and students. The need to
incorporate the traditional teachings
alongside the ‘western’ method of science
teaching came out as a resounding priority
for all those consulted. An assessment tool
was developed in order that the science
delivery methods could be evaluated after
implementation.
Developing learning materials for use
in these Nunavut schools does not happen
in isolation. Lewthwaite says, “We are very
closely connected to teachers and students
in the schools, the community members,
and the school and territorial administrations. These resources have been developed collaboratively.”
The evaluation tool is now being used
to monitor progress in the three schools.
The results are positive in two out of three
of the schools. One school was not seeing
positive progress. Why? The high turnover
of staff in northern schools is a major
contributing factor.
“The problem is the turnover in education is a major impediment to success. If
you can have the same team and the same
game plan it is much easier to accomplish
goals. If there is going to be changeover
bring someone in that has the same mind
set and capability. You need people that
can fulfil the capacity.”
Another factor is the ‘southern’ teaching
methods that come with teachers imported from southern Canada. Lewthwaite
says, “The southern way of teaching in
northern communities doesn’t always
work. You simply cannot take Western science and southern teaching practices and
deliver it to northern communities as you
would in an urban school in Winnipeg or
Vancouver. It just won’t work.”
“Teaching about life and talking about
the return of the sun provides a beautiful
context for learning science and mathematics,” says Robinson. “How can you
show the importance of light unless you
use the example of the difference between
clear ice and ice that has snow on it?
And then look at how light enters through
the ice?”
Where do we go from here?
The heart of the Manitoba CRYSTAL is
the learner and their experiences. The
work done so far has built a foundation for
what is to come. The resources that have
come out of this project are extensive and
differ significantly from materials used
readily in Canadian classrooms.
“A lot of resources that go into schools
don’t come with the research and
evaluation that the Manitoba CRYSTAL
resources have built in. They don’t come
with research about what contributes
to best practice. This strong evaluation
component and validation of the resources ‘working’ in the classroom is key
to student success. It’s important for users
to understand that with a resource like
Return of the Sun, they are unlikely to see
anything better than this in their lifetime,
because of the research work we’ve done
alongside the resource development. It’s
like a once in a lifetime opportunity pro-
vided for them. It’s now up to the users as
to how they move forward with what we’ve
given them,” says Lewthwaite.
Knowledge translation is a key component of what comes out of the CRYSTAL
projects. The resources developed need
to be put into use in classrooms across
the country. To this end, they are made
freely available on the Manitoba CRYSTAL website. These have been widely used
resources. One website – sci-ed.org – has
recorded up to 2,000 downloads, not hits,
per month of these resources.
Another translation activity happened
at the Second International Conference
on Stories in Science Teaching, held in
Munich, Germany in July. The theme
was “Stories from the history of science:
Knowledge translation for the science
classroom.” This conference brought
together researchers, scholars, and educators from twelve countries to present and
discuss stories relating to the history of
science and how to use those stories in the
classroom, to educate students. The Maurice Price Foundation under the umbrella
of the Manitoba CRYSTAL grant provided
significant funding to the conference.
“There is an international cry for
educating for a sustainable future. There
is good context for teaching science in
sustainability,” said Robinson “so this is
one other area of focus.”
“Most surveys suggest that students optimum interest in school science is around
the grade 5/6 level. Their perception of science as a subject – in the learning – peaks
around grade 5/6,” said Lewthwaite.
“There has to be changes in the orthodoxy of curriculum and the way in which
science is taught in order to upset the
applecart – because the apples are spoiling.
We’re really trying to foster a more positive
attitude shift in students. These shifts are
likely to come from changes in curriculum, changes in assessment and changes
in teaching practices. If we do that, we’ve
been successful.” n
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 14
Hot off the presses
Wolf Tree
(Coteau Books)
Alison Calder
English, film, and theatre
A first collection of
sharp, clever,
wicked poems that
range from images
of circus freaks
and two-headed
calves to snow
geese and wind in
the pines. A wolf
tree is a tree in
a bush or a thicket which is different in
shape from those around it; a tree whose
broader trunk and spreading branches
indicate that it once grew alone but is
now surrounded.
Alison Calder’s poems shine the light
of a poet’s curiosity on all manner of
“natural occurrences,” which nevertheless stand out. The book opens with an
examination of the extreme forms this
nature may take – from the Dutch legend
of the false child Sooterkin, to twoheaded calves, Zip the Pinhead, and other
medical curiosities, particularly those
captured by 19th century photographic
techniques. The disquieting feelings created by
these subjects persist, causing the reader
to proceed watchfully, even when the poet’s attention switches to more common
themes and images – plastic clotheslines,
wildflowers of western Canada, snow
geese, the Porta Nigra in Trier, Germany.
A selection of poems from this manuscript received the Bronwen Wallace
Memorial Award for writing excellence
by a writer under the age of 35. A section
15 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
Recent books by UofM faculty members
of this manuscript, Sexing the Prairie,
was published in the journal Open Letter
in Fall 2006.
The Red Indians: An Episodic,
Informal Collection of Tales
from the History of Aboriginal
People’s Struggles in Canada
(Arbeiter Ring, 2007)
Peter Kulchyski
native studies
The Red
Indians is a
theoretically nuanced, frank, and
accessible book
about Aboriginal resistance in
Canada, historical
and contemporary. In the manner of Eduardo Galeano’s famous trilogy
Memories of Fire, the book uncovers a
critical, living history of conflict.
The Red Indians, with its polyvalent
title that points to the many issues covered in the text, introduces readers to the
history of colonial oppression in Canada,
and looks at contemporary examples of
resistance. Kulchyski clarifies the unique
and specific politics of Aboriginal resistance in Canada.
Peter Kulchyski is a leading Canadian
Native Studies scholar and has published
numerous books on Aboriginal issues,
including Like the Sound of a Drum: Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and
Nunavut, which won the 2005 Alexander
Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction.
Influenza 1918: Disease, Death
and Struggle in Winnipeg
(University of Toronto Press)
Esyllt Jones
history
The influenza pandemic
of 1918–1919
killed as many
as fifty million
people worldwide
and affected the
vast majority of
Canadians. Yet the
pandemic, which
came and left in
one season, never to recur in any significant way, has remained difficult to interpret. What did it mean to live through
and beyond this brief, terrible episode,
and what were its long-term effects?
Influenza 1918 uses Winnipeg as a case
study to show how disease articulated and
helped to re-define boundaries of social
difference. Esyllt W. Jones examines the
impact of the pandemic in this fragmented
community, including its role in the eruption of the largest labour confrontation in
Canadian history, the Winnipeg General
Strike of 1919. Arguing that labour historians have largely ignored the impact of
infectious disease upon the working class,
Jones draws on a wide range of primary
sources including mothers’ allowance and
orphanage case files in order to trace the
pandemic’s affect on the family, the public
health infrastructure, and other social
institutions. This study brings into focus
the interrelationships between epidemic
disease and working class, gender, labour,
and ethnic history in Canada.
Influenza 1918 concludes that social
conflict is not an inevitable outcome
of epidemics, but rather of inequality
and public failure to fully engage all
members of the community in the fight
against disease.
Social Murder
(Arbeiter Ring, 2007)
Robert Chernomas, Ian Hudson
economics
Corporate
power is one
of the strongest
forces shaping our
world. More than
half of the top 100
economic entities
today are private
corporations. With
their immense
size comes commensurate influence, to the point where
corporations are able to wreak social
and environmental destruction with few
serious consequences. Yet, amazingly,
this subject is essentially absent from the
study of economics.
The conservative economic theory
that dominates the profession is based
on the core belief that as little as possible
should interfere with businesses’ pursuit
of profit. This approach to economics ignores history, politics, poverty, the natural environment, and social class, among
other inconvenient realities. Conservative
economics would almost be laughable
– were it not for the fact that this way of
thinking helps prop up the worst excesses
of capitalism.
Social Murder examines the connections between the destructiveness of
global capitalism and the professional
economists who help keep it that way.
Out There /In Here: Masculinity,
Violence and Prisoning
(Fernwood Publishing)
Elizabeth Comack • sociology
Elizabeth
Comack
explores the
complicated connections between
masculinity and
violence in the lives
of men incarcerated at a provincial
prison. Moving
between the spaces
of ‘out there’ and ‘in here,’ the discussion
traces the men’s lives in terms of their
efforts to ‘do’ masculinity and the place of
violence in that undertaking. In drawing
out these connections, similarities with
the lives of other men become apparent.
In the process, we also learn that prisons
are not a solution to public concerns
about crime and violence. Prison is a
gendered space in which violence is a
systemic feature and the pressures on
men to ‘do’ masculinity are even more
pronounced. Sending racialized and
economically marginalized men to prison
only encourages and reaffirms aggression, dominance and the exercise of brute
power as legitimate social practices.
Women in British Imperial
Airspace, 1922-1937
(McGill-Queen’s University Press)
Liz Millward
women’s and gender studies
The romance
of flying
the airways that
developed above
the British empire
between the
two world wars
seduced young
women with
the promise of
independence,
glamour, and adventure.
Using a wealth of archival material,
including government documents, Liz
Millward investigates the very idea of airspace. She maps the contours of five forms
of civilian airspace – the private, the commercial, the imperial, the national, and
the body of the pilot herself – as concrete
places through which social differences
such as gender, class, race, and sexuality
were reproduced and challenged.
Women in British Imperial Airspace
is a provocative exploration of the often
difficult and rebellious struggle of women
pilots as they attempted to produce,
define, and gain access to the spaces created when popular and commercial flying
took off.
Discourse, Desire, and Fantasy in
Jürgen Habermas’ Critical Theory
(Routledge Press)
Kenneth MacKendrick
religion
This book argues that
Jürgen Habermas’ critical theory can be
productively developed by incorporating a wider understanding of fantasy
and imagination as part of its conception of communicative rationality and
communicative pathologies. Given that
meaning is generated both linguistically
and performatively, MacKendrick argues
that desire and fantasy must be taken
into consideration as constitutive aspects
of intersubjective relations. His aim is
to show that Habermasian social theory
might plausibly renew its increasingly
severed ties with the early critical theory
of the Frankfurt School by taking account
of these features of practice life, thus simultaneously rekindling the relevance of
the nearly forgotten emancipatory intent
in his earlier work and rejuvenating an
emphasis on the contemporary critique of reason.
This innovative new study
will be of interest to those
focusing on the early
writings of Habermas, the
writings of the Frankfurt
School, and the relation
between critical theory,
hermeneutics, and
psychoanalysis. n
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 16
ideas to innovation
BYOB–Be Your Own Boss
There are two kinds of entrepreneurs in this world. Those
with business and managerial training and experience, and
those with technical knowledge of the product or service.
This is where the eureka project—Smartpark’s Incubator—comes in.
Gary Brownstone, resident director of the eureka project and a
University of Manitoba graduate himself says, “We can help both
types of entrepreneurs.”
The eureka project helps develop the business skills needed to
succeed. In the current economic times, incubators are that extra
insurance needed to ensure new start-up companies are on the
road to success.
The eureka project was launched in 2007 and has already produced exciting results, as measured by revenues, number of employees, and technologies developed within the client companies.
Its location in Smartpark, adjacent to the University of Manitoba
Fort Garry Campus, provides a source of seemingly limitless
benefits. Eureka project clients collaborate with researchers, employ students, teach courses, and are often mentored by faculty
and staff at the U of M.
Currently, the eureka project collaborates with eleven client
companies in sectors such as functional foods, agricultural
technologies, structure monitoring, and software and new media
development.
17 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
“We focus on companies with at least a North American
market, but preferably a global market”, says Gary Brownstone,
director of the eureka project. “We are working with four of our
clients to secure financing in the $2 to $5 million range which
will enable them to accelerate their growth to the next level,”
says Brownstone.
The power of the location can best be exemplified through the
story of one eureka company’s experience. When the company
(of three people) was meeting with a multinational client who
was bringing fourteen experts to the meeting, they were able to
create a team of equal heft and knowledge to assist them in the
meeting. Professors and directors from the U of M, and government representatives were able to generate confidence in the
relationship by demonstrating that the company had access to a
wealth of talent. There are several similar examples.
The eureka project seeks clients that have developed intellectual property and are ready to launch or accelerate their marketing. In addition to marketing, clients receive advice on strategic
planning and accessing financing. Like the training wheels on
a bicycle, the goal of the eureka project is to ultimately help
grow companies to financial self-sufficiency, and then wean
them from incubation. n
feature
BOOKS
biopsies
Beware
They made the world take note when they began biopsying
every patient despite what blood tests said, and now they
are on their way to making biopsies a thing of the past.
l-r: Peter Nickerson
and David Rush
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 18
Tamara Nathaniel
By Sean Moore
Feature
It was a good match. It was15 years ago when a Winnipeg man in his 40s received a kidney with blood and
tissue types similar enough to his own that his body was unlikely to reject it. Indeed, if things went the way
textbooks suggested, this allograft would still be employed as his body’s full-time chemist and maid. A long
career to be sure, but one that appeared possible in the first few months following surgery when his blood
tests continually had fine results. But then something peculiar happened. So some University of Manitoba
researchers began asking some questions. The answers were difficult for many to first accept, but textbooks
have nevertheless since been revised.
“How did the complete
scarring of the kidney tissue
take place without any clues?”
19 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
(Left) Normal glomerulus,
H/E; (Below) Normal kidney
“Let’s say your car is running beautifully and then one day you take it for a
routine checkup to the mechanic,” internal medicine’s David Rush said. “And
the mechanic says this car is completely
destroyed and you have to sell it. And you
say, ‘What? But it’s running fine. There
was no indication there was something
wrong.”
“Well, that is what happened here,” the
patient’s doctor said.
For years blood tests were used to
determine if the grafted organ was getting rejected or working improperly.
It seemed a good indicator since our
muscles release a substance called creatinine and this gets filtered by kidneys. So
the issue is simple: when creatinine levels
increase in the blood, kidney function is
likely waning.
But as Rush and his colleague Peter
Nickerson observed, the anatomy of the
kidney ensures blood tests are far from
foolproof because, like a car’s engine, the
kidney consists of many compartments
performing independent tasks. Parts
may fail, but overall it still runs. Indeed,
you only need about 30 per cent of your
kidneys to function properly before you
start feeling sick.
An adult has about five litres of blood,
yet its kidneys filter about 180 litres of
blood a day. The two fist-sized organs
exquisitely control salt and water levels,
discarding whatever is in excess via the
urine and reabsorbing whatever is needed
through tubules, a network of small tubes
some 80 kilometers long. Nestled among
these tubules are the glomeruli, tufts of
capillaries that do the actual filtering.
The index case had blood tests showing perfect levels of creatinine. But
doctors also measure levels of serum
albumin, a protein floating around blood
in abundance. When its levels drop, the
sieve-like structures of the glomeruli are
likely letting it slip past, and if that’s the
case, urine becomes frothy – a symptom
the index case had.
“There was no question this man was
sick,” Rush said. “The issue is when we
did the biopsy we were expecting to find
a problem in the compartment containing the glomerulus, the filter. But what
we found was the compartment with the
tubules was completely scarred.”
To understand his surprise, imagine
you’re reading in bed one night when
suddenly all the lights go out. You suspect
something is wrong with the breaker and
go to check on it. Sure enough, the fuse
blew, but the basement has flooded too.
“And so you ask, ‘Well, when did this
happen?’ It was completely unexpected,”
Rush said. “There were no clues to the
other processes. We expected to find
something wrong, but how did the complete scarring of the kidney tissue take
place without any clues? It was mindboggling. That is the best way to put it.
And that’s when we decided we had to do
biopsies at regular, scheduled intervals
despite what blood test showed.”
This idea, although straightforward,
was a paradigm shift. Rush and Nickerson began their program of “protocol
biopsies” and discovered that 20-30 per
cent of kidney transplants quietly succumb to “subclinical rejection”, a term
they coined. In short it means the body’s
immune system acutely rejects the kidney
without giving much evidence of it.
Ideally, each graft should last as long
as possible to ensure effective use of
limited resources. About 500 Manitobans
are living with a transplanted kidney;
many more are awaiting one. A kidney
transplanted from a deceased donor, on
average, will last 12 years. If it’s from a
living donor it’s 16 to 20 years. But that
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 20
Feature
Tamara Nathaniel
l-r: Peter Nickerson
and David Rush
20-year lifespan hasn’t changed much in
the last 20 years, even with the new drugs
added to doctor’s arsenals.
“Part of the reason for this, we feel, is
that we aren’t being aggressive enough
and looking for these early rejections.
If we could detect them and change our
drug therapies early and accordingly,
we could prolong our grafts. And that’s
the whole focus of our research,”
Nickerson said.
Nickerson is currently developing a
tool to replace biopsies (more on this
later) because biopsies are an unpleasant,
and somewhat expensive, necessity. Minor complications from a biopsy include
blood in the urine. This happens five per
cent of the time. Major complications involve internal bleeding, resulting in clots
and the stoppage of kidney function.
One in 2,000 patients will die.
“It’s nothing to be scared of,”
Marlene DeFoort, a 65-year-old mother
of three and one of Rush’s patients said.
She received a kidney from one of her
sons in January of 2008 and has had
three biopsies since, her most recent one
in October.
21 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
“The whole process takes about five
minutes for them to use an ultrasound to
find your kidneys, and then a long needle
is used to take the kidney sample. And if
they need to take another sample, they
poke you a second time. You don’t feel
anything because you are anesthetized
locally. And when it’s done, you lay on the
table for three or four hours, keeping very
still, and then you go home and you’re
not supposed to do anything for
24 hours,” she said.
•••••••
In 1984 a research team from John Hopkins University published a paper in the
journal Transplantation that reported on
their findings garnered from a series of
unsystematic biopsies. They found white
blood cells in some transplanted kidneys.
These do not reside in properly functioning kidneys, but the researchers nevertheless dismissed them because they found
that some of these kidneys worked well
later on.
“I think that paper did a disservice to
the follow-up of patients with transplants
because it was quoted a couple of times,”
Rush said. “And, in fact, when we started
publishing our stuff the authors of this
paper said, ‘What are you doing, this is
silly. Why are you paying so much attention to this?’ And the first few times we
sent our work to international meetings
we were refused because they thought
our work was unimportant.”
But in 1997, renal pathologists,
nephrologists and transplant surgeons
from around the world gathered in Banff,
Alberta, for a conference that has since
been held every two years. Here the experts developed a working classification
of renal allograft pathology. “This,” Rush
said, “was fortuitous.”
The subclinical rejections Rush and
Nickerson found were all, according to
the Banff 97 schema, officially rejection.
“So when we showed our results to our
colleagues, they scratched their heads and
said ‘no.’ They intended for this Banff criteria to apply only to kidneys that weren’t
working properly. But here we were
telling them we had a seemingly healthy
kidney that met their criteria. They did
not like this,” Rush said.
The following year Rush and Nickerson completed a randomized study
to provide more robust insights. In the
paper, which has since been cited over
100 times, Nickerson and Rush followed
two patient groups with 36 Manitobans in
each. Group A received biopsies one, two,
three, six and 12 months after the transplant, with blood tests throughout, while
Group B had only the blood tests and a
biopsy at the six and 12-month mark.
The groups showed similar results on
the blood tests, but fared very different
otherwise. Group A had no scarring – the
biopsies gave doctors the information
they needed to deliver the Goldilocks-degree of immunosuppressant drug therapy.
But Group B’s first biopsy revealed scarring in the tubulointerstitial compartment. The glomeruli, however, looked
and filtered fine.
Between six and 12 months, Group
B’s creatinine levels spiked. Scarring increased to the point where most kidneys
were significantly less functional than
their counterparts after 24 months. A
more recent study of recipients of living
donor allografts showed the same findings: Rejection, like an iceberg, exists
mostly below the surface. Or, in a word,
subclinically.
“So function doesn’t distinguish
between healthy and unhealthy grafts, at
least early on. But pathology does. And
since we’re one of the few centres in the
world that do these routine biopsies, we
have the data to show that these subclinical rejections are real, a concept that now
is accepted by many centres,” Nickerson
said.
Using this data, Nickerson is now
developing a non-invasive tool that can
replace the need for protocol biopsies.
The means to this end is urine, more specifically, the proteins in it. Working with
John Wilkins, professor in internal medicine and director of the Manitoba Centre
for Proteomics and Systems Biology, he
began examining proteins in the urine
of four groups of people – those with
clinical rejection, subclinical rejection,
healthy transplants, and people without
transplants.
Biopsies are very informative, but a
problem with them, besides their $1,000price tag in Canada, is that rejection
can be spotty at the outset, so the first
biopsy may not tell the whole story. By
the time the next biopsy finds evidence
of rejection, scar tissue may have already
irreversibly developed. Urine, however,
represents the whole kidney right off the
bat because it travels throughout the kidney, and like most travelers it has a story
to tell. The challenge is getting that story
in a meaningful and accurate way. One
way is to use genomics, but it’s expensive
and involves complex processes (it’s not,
in other words, readily mass produced).
What Nickerson is after is something as
simple as a home-pregnancy test: pee on a
stick to see if you’re sick. Proteomics – the
study of proteins – offers a good chance of
achieving this.
“We were the first to say you had to
go beyond blood tests and do biopsies if
you really wanted to know what’s going
on in the kidney. But now,” Nickerson
said, “we’ve gone further to say biopsies
aren’t good enough because you can’t do
one everyday. But you can do a urine test
everyday.”
To understand urine’s makeup, the
team uses a mass spectrometer to separate
proteins into distinct groups. The data is
made more user-friendly by converting
it into a barcode-like picture. The team
then compares patterns between all the
samples and hone in on the anomalies.
Unlike serum albumin, which makes
urine frothy and has been known about
for centuries, Nickerson is learning about
a bevy of proteins previously unknown to
leak out of the body in urine
“It was a bit of a surprise to find 600
proteins in urine. A lot of people thought
that the kidney’s filter system would prevent proteins from getting into the urine,”
Nickerson said.
Of those 600, 64 are unique to clinical
and subclinical rejection patients, and
61 are unique to subclinical and healthy
transplant patients. It took the team a
summer to learn about just one particular
protein, a type of chemokine that shows
up in clinical and subclinical rejection
urine, but not in urine from histologically
normal kidneys.
“Ultimately,” Nickerson said, “we
would like to get to the point where we
can develop a tool so that people can
test themselves to see if they have these
biomarkers in their urine, and if they do,
they can call the clinic and get their drugs
adjusted. It would be cheap, but more
importantly, fast. And ideally we could do
it all without biopsies.”
•••••••
To lower the risk of rejection, doctors
match tissue types between donor and
recipient as best they can. A 6-antigen
matched kidney is the best possible
match, and it’s what the index patient
originally had. It means the six principle
bits of protein responsible for identifying
foreign tissue, and therefore stimulating
an immune response towards it, were
unlikely to become alarmed when crossexamining his graft. It’s the lottery winner
of kidney matches and it should have
lasted upwards of 15 years. But it failed
after only three.
In 1999, the man got a 3-antigen
matched kidney from his wife. Far from
ideal, yet with the vigilance provided by
protocol biopsies he still has it and is living a productive life, Rush said.
But as DeFoort said, “If Dr. Nickerson
could replace biopsies with anything else,
that would be great. It would be fantastic.
It would really change my life.” n
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 22
Spotlight on Students
Caroline
Peters
Tamara Nathaniel
Showcasing
Student
Research
Juan José Aveiro-Talavera
environment and geography
How do you create better health,
nutrition, and reduce the population’s
vulnerability in Paraguay? Just ask Juan
Jose Aveiro-Talavera. Juan is conducting research to determine the environmental impact associated with human
Juan José Aveiro-Talavera
livelihoods in the Ñeembucú wetlands
ecoregion, Paraguay. He is working
in partnership with the stakeholders
(farmers, ranchers and the community)
in order to balance production and
environmental priorities.
The results of his research study
will show us the connection
between changes experienced in this
ecoregion related to human activities
in agriculture (farming and ranching),
industry, communications (roads),
energy (hydroelectric dams) and also
sociodemographic tendencies.
Caroline Peters
social work
After 22 years as a field social worker
Caroline Peters decided to step it up
a notch. She is currently in the PhD
program in social work, studying social
service systems that provide services to
lone mothers in poverty by exploring the
relationships between mothers and their
former social workers (with interviews).
Misunderstandings, judgment,
confusion and mistrust are just a few
of the negative experiences mothers described. Therefore, her analysis
had to go beyond the experiences and
practices of the individual social workers and explore the high caseloads, the
funding cutbacks, and the mandates of
the agencies.
The whole process resulted in a
multi-level analysis of women’s and
social worker’s experiences, a critique
of systems that offer services to low
income lone mothers, and also an
exploration of the broader issues of
racism, sexism, and classism.
Jamie Penner
nursing
Jamie has a passion for oncology
nursing. She is a graduate student in
the master of nursing program. She is
studying in the evidence-based nursing
practice in cancer care, palliative care,
and cancer prevention stream. She is
developing a program of research in
the area of advanced head and neck
23 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
oncology with an emphasis on psychosocial issues that arise for patients and
families dealing with head and neck
disease. Jamie’s thesis project examines
the experiences of family caregivers of
patients with advanced head and neck
cancer receiving enteral tube feeding.
The findings from such work will
provide evidence-based guidance to clinicians that will enable them to better
meet family caregiver needs regarding the care of the tube-fed patient,
and provide the foundation for future
psychosocial/educational intervention
studies in the context of a randomized
controlled trial. n
Danielle Durston, human
ecology, first prize winner
in the applied sciences
category
T
he third annual student poster competition
was an oasis for science buffs wanting to know more about,
say, alkyl thiol-capped nanoparticles, or mathematical modeling
of climate change’s effects on whale sharks.
Over the summer months 56 undergraduate students
conducted research in one of three scientific fields – applied,
biological or physical sciences – to discover facts about nature
and perhaps even their passion for research, to learn about the
research process, and to get a chance to win some money.
On October 10, the research posters resulting from this scientific
toil were reviewed by 30 judges drawn from the university community, industry and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council of Canada (NSERC) Prairies Regional Office in Winnipeg.
Prizes of $500, $300, and $200 were awarded to the top three posters in each category. “Fundamentally, it exposes undergraduates to what the
research experience is, which you can’t translate in a classroom
or through a textbook,” Guy Levesque, judge and NSERC-Prairie
manager, said.
“This is about feeding the pipeline of the next world-class
researchers. These students were already sold on science, and this
competition hooks them in – it hopefully confirms to them that
this is what they want to do.”
This year’s first prize winner in the applied sciences category
was human ecology student Danielle Durston for her project,
“The effects of dietary n-3 on triglyceride and phopholipid
fatty acid composition of hepatic and adipose tissue in fa/fa
zucker rats.”
Jamie Penner
Medicine student Miten Dhruve took top honours in
the biological sciences category for his project, “DLX
Transcriptional Regulation of Insulin Expression during
Pancreatic Development.”
In the physical sciences category, science student Erica
Franzmann won first prize for her project, “Explosions in Space!
An analysis of an intriguing Supernova Remnant using X-ray
data from European Satellite XMM – Newton.”
The competition, sponsored by the Office of the VicePresident (Research) and NSERC, provides opportunities for
undergraduates to get exposure to, and gain an appreciation
of, research.
“We host the competition to encourage as many students as
possible to pursue their curiosities and then offer them a venue
where they can display their work and gain a sense of pride for
it,” said event organizer Digvir Jayas, associate vice-president
(research).
“It’s obvious to students that they come to university to learn
in a classroom, but the laboratory is a wonderful teacher and
many students may not appreciate how much they can learn
– about a topic and themselves – by doing research until they
actually do it.”
Chemistry student Efehi Ogbomo agrees.
“It’s hard work doing research. It takes a lot of determination,
so you have to find something you’re curious about, something
you want to learn more about. For me, I love crystallography.”
Ogbomo’s project was titled, “Expression, Purification and
Mercury Binding Properties of Right Handed Coiled Coil.” The
significance of his findings is that these could be used in a process to take mercury out of waterways.
“I like to look at the big picture. I like to see how this small
thing can impact the larger world. I don’t see myself as stopping
here at this poster either. I’m going to take this and go beyond,
and really make an impact with my research.” n
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 24
Tamara Nathaniel
By Sean Moore
StORY
THE
A Jewish saying asks what
is truer than the truth?
And it answers: the story.
25 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
Y
warren cariou
in addition to holding a Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Narrative, Community and Indigenous Cultures, is a professor of
English in the Faculty of Arts and is Director of the University
of Manitoba’s newly established Centre for Creative Writing
and Oral Culture. He was recently awarded a Fulbright Visiting
Chair. The Canada-U.S. Fulbright Visiting Research Chairs are
awarded to prominent Canadian and American scholars who
wish to conduct research, work with faculty and graduate students, and if they choose, offer guest lectures and teach while
at select American and Canadian universities. Cariou will
undertake his studies at Arizona State University (ASU) While
at ASU with his Fulbright award in creative writing, Cariou
will work on his novel-in-progress, “The Hummingbird Cloak”,
which is partly set in the American southwest.
Everyday people invent narratives, repackage old ones, corrupt
others, and preserve, by various means, those narratives that matter
most to them, because, perhaps, they provide that otherwise
unobtainable quality accurate self-definition requires. Stories
abound because humanity seems to depend on them. Such
fundamental things need study; the University of Manitoba has
a scholar dedicated to understanding them – or some of them
at least.
Warren Cariou is the university’s newest
Canada Research Chair (CRC); his Chair
in Narrative, Community and Indigenous Cultures began on April 1, 2008.
His role as such will be to foster respect
for cultural differences by re-evaluating
what “Canadian community” means and
he does this by examining the stories and
stereotypes people tell and hold onto. By
looking at these narratives, Cariou finds
effective ways to accommodate different
communities within our understanding of
a multicultural Canada.
“I’m interested in smaller communities,
in particular the ones where storytelling
is important,” Cariou said. “So my own
focus is on Aboriginal cultures and the
ways oral storytelling has really preserved
and been, in effect, their culture, because
so much of Aboriginal culture is contained
in the stories – so much teaching, so much
philosophy, so much practical knowledge
of how to be on the land is contained in
their stories.”
As CRC, Cariou will approach his task
from various angles, one of which involves
resuscitating books Aboriginal authors
penned without much fanfare in the publishing world.
“I would really like to bring them back
to the public eye,” Cariou said. Many
publishers prior to the 1980s had interests
in printing Aboriginal books, but the editors (not used to dealing with authors who
were rooted in oral traditions), and the
writers (who were better oral than textual
communicators), did not find the success
they both hoped for. As a result, the stories
fell to the wayside.
“There are a lot of stories that get left
out or marginalized. But these stories
have a lot of powerful, positive ways to tell
people who they are and it’s not a negative
thing. It’s something they can be proud of.”
“I don’t see it as a straightforward ‘here,
teach these people these stories and they’ll
be well-adjusted and able to shed stereotypes.’ But by reevaluating and giving more
attention to Aboriginal peoples, it gives a
validation to those stories that they didn’t
have in academic culture before.”
Academia, Cariou said, has historically
treated Aboriginal stories as something
akin to gallery pieces – quaint relics good
for admiration, but not necessarily as
valuable ways of interpreting the past
and present. Since many stories weren’t
written down they were viewed as having
little value.
“But I think it’s really been discovered
in the last generation or so, that there
is just so much important knowledge
embedded in these stories from all First
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 26
“We define ourselves by our
stories, and in so doing,
define who we are not.”
Nations and Métis that we all can – everyone – learn from them. And I think from
evaluating them and trying to understand
them from an academic perspective, and
from trying to be as respectful as we can,
it gives them a kind of power that they
deserve. Our academic community gives
them the credence they deserve in the
larger community. And I think that can
have effects; it will take time but it will
have effects for individuals and their lives.”
Many of the stories people tell are about
belonging; belonging to just about anything. We define ourselves by our stories,
and in so doing, define who we are not.
Instantly, we have created “the other”. This
opens the door to stereotyping – about
ourselves and others – and we may then
find ourselves uttering statements like,
“I don’t belong in that neighbourhood
because…,” or “All [fill in the ethnicity]
are….” Suddenly barriers in our otherwise
free society have been erected. But as
Cariou discovered in writing his awardwinning book, Lake of Prairies, that sense
of differentiation is overwhelmingly
unsubstantiated yet often inherited
without question.
27 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
CARIOU
will approach his task from various angles, one of which involves resuscitating books Aboriginal authors penned without
much fanfare in the publishing world. “I would really like to
bring them back to the public eye.”
“A couple of texts we are working on right now are George
Cluetsi’s Potlatch (1969) and Anahero’s The Devil in Deerskins (1972). We are focusing on texts from before 1980,
though we are not entirely exclusive about dates.”
“Clutesi describes the last Tloo-qwah-nah, or Potlatch,
the gift-giving feast that was traditional among First Nations
but then banned by Canada’s “Indian Act.” He participated in
the potlatch he describes and says he writes this account with
considerable trepidation, omitting names of those involved,
because some of his own family had been arrested for having
Source: www.antiqbook.com
staged a similar ceremony.”
“By writing a novel or critical study, or
doing a documentary film, I think it can
get people to think differently about those
negative, stereotypical narratives that
we have been accepting or just not
thinking about.”
“I think my role is to ideally make
people think about these things. If I can
get people to be critical about those stories
they received about who they are, where
they belong, and where other people
belong, then we’ll be able to move forward
as a community.” n
Viewpoint
Remember When…
Tamara Nathaniel
By Tamara Ansons
Can you remember high school and how great
times were back then? You probably had valuable friendships,
more leisure time to watch television and perhaps you were even
valedictorian. But, was the past really as good as you remember
it? Research by Jason Leboe in the Department of Psychology
suggests that our perceptions of the past are influenced by the
ease with which these thoughts come to mind. In fact, Leboe’s
research indicates that the mere ability to remember seemingly
mundane details from our past may produce positive feelings for
past events, even when those events were neutral or even somewhat negative. As a consequence, if upon thinking back on your
high school years you are able to produce a surprising amount of
detail about your old chemistry teacher; you may find yourself
feeling strangely nostalgic for your old chemistry class, irrespective of how you actually felt about chemistry at the time!
This finding is one example of a bias that occurs from the use
of rules in remembering tasks. For example, people often use the
amount of detail remembered about a past event as evidence of
the authenticity of the event. Although the use of this rule generally leads to correct remembering judgments, it can also lead
to systematic errors, like the perception that the past was more
positive than it actually was.
Similarly, other attributions influence how we experience the
world. For example, imagine solving a crossword puzzle that
appears in Saturday’s newspaper. To what extent do you feel
that you solved the puzzle through your own skill, as opposed
to some external source, such as luck? According to Leboe’s
research, the answer depends on the amount of effort you believe
you have put into generating the answer. Counter-intuitively,
however, the more effort people put into solving an answer, the
more likely they are to conclude that the answer came from some
external source, and not from their own ability to generate the
correct answer!
Together with his team of graduate and undergraduate students, Leboe is examining these and other perplexing errors that
occur during remembering and perceptual tasks. By determining
the rules that govern these errors,
they hope to uncover a common
set of principles that lead to both
correct and incorrect recollections
of past events and perceptions of
our current environment.
Tamara Ansons
Tamara is a student in the
Department of Psychology studying
in the brain and cognitive sciences
area under the supervision of
Jason Leboe. n
Jason Leboe and
Tamara Ansons
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 28
Creative Works
Keyh le
Guy Maddin became the University of Manitoba’s distinguished
film maker in residence in July 2007. The position is a joint
position within film studies and the Department of Icelandic. He is
collaborating with George Toles, chair of the film studies program,
on the new feature film KEYHOLE.
29 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
Guy Maddin
By Guy Maddin
(Opposite) (l to r) Winnipeg-based artists Michael
Dumontier, Caelum Vatnsdal
and Jeff Funnell creating
work in Paul Butler’s studio,
Winnipeg, January 2008. The two collage pieces on
the right are untitled pieces
made by Guy Maddin at
that very party.
The KEYHOLE PROJECT started out of frustration I experienced trying to find within any
of my movies a single central image strong enough to go directly onto a movie poster. I was
always happy with the overall look of the films, but I began to lament the absence of an iconic,
unforgettable shot within them. So, I promised myself I would start my next script, not
entirely with words, but with images – strong, original compositions – instead.
My Collage Party doyen friend Paul
Butler assembled for me an exciting
group of extremely gifted Canadian artists – Michael Dumontier, Shary Boyle,
Simon Hughes, Brad Phillips, Jeff Funnell, Caelum Vatnsdal, Krisjanis KaktinsGorsline, Alicia Smith – and with them
we set out to make collage pieces based
on a simple two-sentence outline of my
next movie’s story. A collection of galleryworthy work was the delightful result!
The work has already shown at Montreal’s
Dazibao Gallery and University of
Manitoba’s Gallery 111.
Not only have these new works from
other, brilliant sensibilities thrilled me,
they have actually steered my story into
important new directions. Now, images,
not just words, are nudging, bumping, influencing and sometimes even wrenching
the steering wheel of the new narrative!
The new feature film, co-written by
George Toles and myself, is itself called
KEYHOLE, and it will be ready next fall.
During its projection it will be accompanied by live performance elements – live
music and sound effects, holographic
projections of a naked ghost wandering
throughout the theatre, perhaps gunfire,
and, going wholly Grand Guignol,
maybe even that old William Castle
prostate-tingler will be dusted off for
long-overdue use!
I’m determined to throw the kitchen
sink – tastefully, innovatively – at this
cinematic happening.
I’m also determined to gather as much
of the movie’s fascinating collateral material as I can and organize it into a show
which will be installed at a gallery near
the movie’s exhibition venue. This will
include all the collage work, the film’s
unique mono-edition props and jewelry,
courtroom sketch artist accounts of the
shoot, even some on-set composed poetry, and both written and filmed diaries.
I’m also going to make a series of 13
four-minute films, which I’m calling Parallels, with the collaboration of poet John
Ashbery. These films are little parallel
universe narratives that use the same settings and characters as the feature-length
KEYHOLE, but offer little narrative core
samples of the same world, but altered by
the removal or radical alteration of certain important story elements - intriguing
little what-if glimpses into a conjectured,
conditional, film universe, one in which
the feature’s main premises are turned
upside-down. n
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 30
Creative Works
The Art of Innocence:
Children in Medicine
Students in the University
of manitoba Faculty of
Medicine expressed the humanistic
side of medicine through art at the 7th
annual Medical Art Show focusing on the
theme The Art of Innocence: Children in
Medicine held in February 2008.
The exhibit featured poetry, sculpture,
painting, sketch and photography – including a powerful collage by a medical
student about her own experiences as a
child with an illness.
“Children perceive caregivers differently…how will we as physicians
demonstrate care, empathy, compassion
to children and reach out as clinicians?”
asked senior coordinator Laura Kravetsky, Med II student.
“The goal of the art show is to give
medical students an opportunity to explore the humanistic and caring aspects
of medicine,” added senior coordinator
Deanna Klassen, Med II student. “We
are cognizant that our responsibility as
doctors is not just about diagnosing and
treating the illness or disease, but treating
the patient as a whole. It’s an important
part of practicing our profession.”
Medical students participating in the
art show gained insight into the issues
faced by pediatric patients, their families
and health care professionals treating
patients. Interpretations of the theme
ranged from how children react to illness
Shirley Gelskey
Trapped like a rat (scanning
electron micrograph of
plaque on dental floss)
to how parents and families feel at time of
diagnosis.
Inspiration for their original art works
came from learning about how the Children’s Hospital Child Life Department
helps children deal with hospitalization
and meeting photographer Keith Levit
regarding capturing images of children
in art.
Future doctors and health care professionals must demonstrate competence,
compassion, and a high level of consistent quality care to children. Through
art, the students were able to explore the
emotional, physical and spiritual impact
of illness on children.
Artistic Images in Dental
Research
The Faculty of Dentistry
recently presented Artistic Images in
Dental Research, a display of vibrant and
colourful images derived from dental
research. Close to 50 images were on
display at this unique exhibition. Titles
included Silhouettes, The Ocean at Night
and Silicon Drop. The exhibit followed
the faculty’s first Research Day that
featured the work of faculty and student
researchers. Research Day and the Art in
Science exhibit are all part of the Faculty
of Dentistry’s 50th year Anniversary
Celebration and 2008 Drive for Top Five.
(see back cover for more images from
this exhibit)
31 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
The UN/RE-Build Studio?
The current trend of the
building industry to move towards
“sustainable” construction practices is
an important step toward achieving a
meaningful and balanced relationship
with the environment. The focus of this
movement is based on new architecture
and construction projects. What is not
being discussed, however, is the hidden
potential in existing buildings in our
urban and rural landscapes.
In rural Canada, there are many
abandoned buildings left behind in the
wake of the depopulation of farming
communities over the last several decades. The buildings that have no further
use are most often left to decompose in
the weather or burned and then buried
or sent to a landfill. In the fall of 2007,
an architecture studio led by professor
Lancelot Coar, worked with a rural farming community in Clearwater, Manitoba
and a non-profit organization, the Harvest Moon Society, to test the ability of
abandoned buildings to provide material
to promote new architecture.
In this studio, fourteen undergraduate
and masters level students worked closely
with both groups in Clearwater and
deconstructed a 106 year-old one-roomschoolhouse that had been abandoned
for over 50 years. The material from
Lancelot Coar
this building proved to be valuable ‘old
growth’ lumber, rich in colour, strength
and sizes. This ‘saved’ lumber provided
the material for three new projects aimed
at helping serve this 68-person farming
community. Two projects were designed
and built on the newly developed interpretive trail in Clearwater; a thirty-foot
long pedestrian bridge and a lookout
platform that overlooks the stunning
Pembina Valley Watershed. The third
project was the development of a community resource centre located within
the Harvest Moon Centre. This room will
provide the opportunity for the farming community, members of the Harvest
Moon Society and visiting classes to
engage and learn from each other.
The impact of this project has been
significant to the community of Clearwater as well as the Harvest Moon Society. It
has also provided many valuable learning
opportunities for the students involved in
the projects: working with inspiring and
visionary clients, hands-on experience
at ‘real’ sites with materials, and giving a
deeply meaningful lesson to students on
the role architecture can play in supporting sustainable building practices and in
developing communities.
This positive experience has resulted
in the Harvest Moon Society nominating
the University of Manitoba – Faculty of
Architecture – for a Manitoba Excellence
in Sustainability Award. This project
was also awarded a grant by the Waste
Reduction and Pollution Prevention fund
offered by Manitoba Conservation.
This year Coar is leading a new studio
group to Clearwater and is working to
deconstruct a century-old barn to provide material for new structures to
be designed by the students for
Clearwater. n
The UN/RE-BUILD STUDIO
crew after taking the house
apart.
UN/RE-Build crew building
at the Harvest Moon Society; Before deconstruction.
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 32
on the horizon
Bringing Research to Life
Speaker Series
The Office of the Vice-President
(Research) sponsors and presents
a free public speaker series titled
Bringing Research to Life. This series
is designed to introduce the general
public to the talented people who
make up the research community at
the University of Manitoba.
The speaker series takes place in the
Robert B. Schulz Lecture Theatre,
located in St. John’s College at the
University of Manitoba. The next
four speaker series topics and
dates are:
War in Outer Space
James Fergusson
January 21, 2009 n 7:00 p.m.
When Family is Business and
Business is Family: Making
Sense of the Special World
of the Family Firm
Reg Litz
February 25, 2009 n 7:00 p.m.
CIHR’s café Scientifique
Remember when you used to spend untold hours sitting
around a table over a beer or coffee with your friends,
solving all the problems of the world, debating all the “big
questions” of the day? That’s what a Café Scientifique is all
about. Simply put, it is larger and slightly more organized
version of those conversations. It’s an opportunity to bring
together researchers with members of the public to spark
a discussion about some of the most interesting- and
sometimes contentious – research currently underway in
Canada.
Come out and participate in discussion at our next two
Café Scientifiques:
Where:McNally Robinson Polo Park – Event Alcove
When:March 4, 2009 – 7-9 p.m.
Topic: Could keeping kids too clean make them sick?
Asthma, allergies & chronic diseases
Panelists: Allan Becker, Charles Bernstein, Carla Taylor
Facilitator: Kent HayGlass
When:April 20, 2009 – 7-9 p.m.
Topic: What affects your mental health?
Panelists: Harvey Chochinov, Patricia Martens, Jitender Sareen
Facilitator: John Arnet
umanitoba.ca/research
33 ResearchLIFE | Winter 2009
2009
Looking Good or
Feeling Healthy?
Roberta Woodgate
March 18, 2009 n 7:00 p.m.
A Day in the Life of
a Storm Chaser
John Hanesiak
April 16, 2009 n 7:00 p.m.
JUST THE FACTS
By the Numbers:
31 tenant companies in Smartpark,
the university’s research and
technology park
161.7
139.6
126.5
120
90
60
30
2007/08
•
$1.2 billion in building assets
146.7
2006/07
8 National Synergy Awards
for Innovation
•
150
154.9
2005/06
•
$460.4 million annual operating
budget (2008/09)
2004/05
37 research centres, institutes &
shared research facilities
•
2003/04
0
Research Funds by Source 2007-08
Provincial
Government
12%
other
42%
80
technology transfer office
invention disclosures
73
70
60
54
50
40
40
39
35
30
2007/08
10
2006/07
20
2005/06
Total: $161.7 million
46
2004/05
Federal
Government
46%
2003/04
•
71 endowed & sponsored research
chairs – including 48 Canada
Research Chairs
7,758 staff (2008) – 3,363 academic
staff, 4,395 support staff
2002/03
•
180
•
sponsored Research income,
2004 to 2008 ($ million)
0
Winter 2009 | ResearchLIFE 34
(above) “Water Fall” by JE
Scott, below l-r, “A Hidden
Cross” and “Blue Diamond” by
Tammy Bonstein. See story on
page 31.